From the USA to Italy + The Netherlands: Sarah

“This could actually be possible. We could do this.”

Sarah always kind of fantasized about living abroad. Her husband had lived in Indonesia as a child and Singapore as a teenager. And they’d spent a summer together in the Philippines when her husband was in college.

But, while living in another country was sort of a fantasy she had, she never really entertained the possibility of actually doing it.

Until she was surfing the internet one day and came across the blog of a guy who didn’t speak Italian and had never been to Italy, but was able to get Italian citizenship simply because his grandfather was Italian.

Sarah thought: Oh, my goodness, my husband is Italian-American. And she spent the next two days googling and checking things out.

And what she learned was: Wow, this could actually be possible. We could actually do this. She had no idea how long it would take to actually accomplish, but now she had a goal.

How did she make the move to Italy happen?

And why did they leave Italy and move back to the US after it happened?

And what made them move to Amsterdam and live there for the past decade?

This is Sarah’s story about leaving home and finding home.

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How did you get Italian citizenship through your husband’s great great grandfather?

It took me about a year to gather all of the documents you had to have: birth, death, and marriage certificates, all the way back to that ancestor. Fortunately, we knew the names and dates for everything and we were able to then acquire these documents. I don't want to say it was easy. It took a lot of time and work. And some of them didn't exist. So we were getting notarized statements from the archives saying this doesn't exist or that this is the closest thing we have. We used religious documents from Italy because not until Napoleon came did Italy start keeping civil records. So before then all birth, death and marriage certificates were in the church, in the parish records. So it was quite an adventure, this whole document gathering thing.

Normally you would apply at the consulate in your country of residence, but I saw that there were waiting times that were years long. They had waiting lists. And so I, of course, was still on these internet forums and I discovered that it was also possible to just go to Italy and apply there. And so that is what we did.

We had a 3-year-old and an almost 1-year-old and we bought one-way tickets to Italy and we kind of settled into this little town that was near where my husband's great great grandfather grew up. We made some friends, and they were friends with the mayor, and in the end, that was how it actually ended up being able to be accomplished. We were there for almost a year and I still consider this one of the great accomplishments of my life.

It was definitely not easy. I never was tempted to give up, but there was a lot of consoling gelato that I had to treat myself to through this whole process. And so many meetings with government officials trying to convince them that this was a real thing. I was printing out government documents that said, Oh yes, this weird thing they're trying to do, but it actually is possible and legal.

How were you going to afford to live in Italy? Did you get jobs there?

So we got our Italian passports, but then we spent a few years just kind of struggling financially with our little kids and not much work history. My husband had started a business just as he graduated from university. Back when we were in the Philippines, he had the idea of doing some kind of import-export business. Unfortunately, we moved to Italy in 2008 and the business failed in the economic downturn.

Which is what caused us to move back to the US.

But I was always fantasizing and strategizing how to get back to Italy. Or at least Europe.

How did you get back to Europe and how did you figure out where in Europe to go?

We decided that maybe Italy wasn't actually the best place to move, given the job prospects in Italy, which are…I don't want to say non-existent, but very difficult. And so I started looking at other options and different countries in Europe because we definitely wanted to move to Europe. And also we had Italian citizenship, which was really important because that would allow us to move to anywhere, at least within the EU.

One thing I looked at actually, was universities. Because we both kind of thought that maybe getting a master's degree in the country is a good way to access the job market and make some connections and also have a local credential, as well as our American one. We each had bachelor's degrees but not master's degrees.

And so I hit on the Netherlands, because they have well-ranked universities and also a lot of English language master's programs. And with an EU passport, you get really cheap tuition. So, that was one factor. And then we started looking at other things like the schools. They had really good schools.

So we hit on Amsterdam, largely as a matter of practicality, but also, I mean it sounded like a cool place to explore. It's very nicely located in Europe, as far as travel. And also it has quite a robust job market, even for English speakers who don't speak Dutch. There are a lot of international companies that are headquartered here. So we thought, Yeah, we'll see.

At that time my husband was running another business and I was working full time in Florida, but I convinced my boss to let me work remotely from Europe.

What do you think your children would say about growing up in Amsterdam versus the way you grew up in the US? How different or how similar is it?

Well, I have actually discussed this with our daughter. I mean, I think there's maybe inherently some bias towards what you know and what you're familiar with, but she's really happy here. She appreciates the freedom and independence that teenagers have here. There is a very different parenting mindset here where they do give kids a lot of freedom and a lot of just like responsibility over their own lives.

It's one thing I really like about the Netherlands: that they give the kids autonomy over their lives. Like ,if you take your kid to the doctor, the doctor talks to your child, not to you. And I really love that. If it's something about them, they're treated as this kind of fully autonomous person. At school, they're encouraged to give their opinions and it's very much about them participating as active members of society.

And people leave their kids home alone when they're 12—and it's normal here. Or they send them to the store or whatever. And so I really like that. I like the way kids are allowed to become independent in this safe and healthy way. I think it is a little bit more like when I grew up in the eighties and nineties. I remember just kind of like roaming the neighborhood and we had boundaries that we had to stay within, but I don't think my mom knew where we were every second. So here I think it feels a lot more like the Gen X or early millennial childhood that people used to have before helicopter parenting really came into vogue. I kind of was that free range, weird parent in the US. So actually for me it was really refreshing that I thought: Oh, here are all these people who share my parenting philosophy.

The one thing that was tough is that everyone rides bicycles here, but no one wears helmets. I mean babies and toddlers do. But once your kid is 5 or 6 and more autonomous and riding their bike to school, you can have them leave home wearing a helmet, but they're not going to arrive at school as the weird kid in the helmet. So that was hard. That took me some years to be comfortable with.

How did you find a job in Amsterdam?

So we immediately started looking. And I think I found my job here first, actually. I started working at a little archive in the Hague. I loved that job. And it was just through a network. I kept a blog for a long time. I think someone read my blog and they're like, Oh, you should apply for this job. And so I did. And then, a couple of months later, my husband also found a job in corporate software sales. And now he does corporate training for software sales.

It's easier to find a job if they don't have to sponsor you–like if you have a visa or some way to be here. That was helpful for my husband and it was also helpful that he had dual citizenship, because it's not a hassle for him to go on business trips to the US, which he does a few times a year. He puts it prominently on his CV now that he's authorized to work in both places. That actually is kind of an asset.

Other languages are always helpful. I've seen a lot of job listings that want English and one European language. So sometimes it's not even which language, they just want you to be bilingual. And of course, here in the Netherlands, Dutch is a huge asset.

Do you speak Dutch? And can you get by without it?

What’s the best thing about living in Amsterdam?

I think it's actually the first place in my life that I would say that I've ever really felt at home. And I think that the reason is that so many people here are not from here. So, I told you about getting written up in the newspaper multiple times for having this international life, which is kind of cool and exciting, I guess, at first. But then after a while, it's like you start to kind of feel like a parlor trick or like people can't relate at all to your life. And you feel like you have to kind of hide it and not talk about it.

There's this part in Emily St. John Mandel's latest book, Sea of Tranquility. She has a character who lives on the moon. And she goes on this book tour in the US and people are talking about living on the moon and it's like this exotic thing and she's reflecting about it later and she thinks a life lived under a dome on the moon is still a life.

And that's what I think a lot about living abroad. I mean there are so many wonderful things about it and I would never change it. But also, it's a life. It's not a vacation. It's not like just a string of Instagram photos. It's a life with all the good and the bad and in between and the mundane that that brings.

But in Amsterdam, it's just not unusual to be from somewhere else to have an interesting migration story. And so I feel like that makes it just easier to just be a person in the world. To just be yourself. Like your whole self. And kind of fit in this weird way where nobody fits in.

So you’re also spending time in Italy?

We always wanted to move to Italy. And now that our kids are getting older, we thought, What if we retired in Italy? So a few years ago we started going and looking. We really want to be close to a major airport because my husband travels for work. And we want our kids to visit us from time to time. And maybe other family and friends. And if you're way off and down a dirt road on a mountain top, it’s a little bit harder to convince people to come visit you.

We settled on Southern Umbria, which is close to the Rome airport, within driving distance or train distance. And then we started looking at towns—over a dozen little Umbrian towns that we kind of scoped out online and thought: oh, this one looks pretty, that one looks pretty. I think this is our inner country mouse coming back out.

We got to this town called Narni.

What’s your advice for someone thinking of moving abroad?

I would say the first thing is: Look at whether you're even allowed to move there, whether it's feasible. Because you can't always get a visa and certainly you can't always get a visa to work or to live permanently. So, that would be my first advice before anything else. See if you actually can move there.

As someone who's lived abroad for a long time, I think I would also say: Expect to expect the unexpected and expect that it will change you.

The people that I know who are happiest abroad, especially long term, are people who don't try to recreate their old life in a new country—they’re kind of the most open to letting the place change them, to doing things in a different way, to thinking in a different way, to giving up beliefs.

There are so many ways to live and your life can get so much bigger and so much more beautiful when you let in those unexpected things.

Got a question for Sarah? Did something in our conversation resonate with you?

Join in the conversation in the comments. Ask questions, share experiences, get ideas, get inspired, get clarity.

Because leaving home is hard. Talking to people who've done it makes it feel less overwhelming. And more fun.

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We also talked about:

• What it was like to return to the US after spending the year in Italy. Spoiler: there was culture shock!

• The thing they learned during their return to the US that made moving to Europe the second time easier and more successful.

• Why they chose to move to Amsterdam instead of a more affordable country.

• The weather in Amsterdam and why you need to put aluminum foil in your windows.

• What the Dutch school system is like and why her kids love it.

• The things she loves about her kids growing up in Amsterdam.

• The things they looked for when they were looking for a place to retire in Italy.

• How moving to Amsterdam helped them create a firm financial foundation for their lives.

• The reason they were able to get a mortgage on a home in Amsterdam with no down payment. Honestly, what you need for a mortgage on a home in Amsterdam will blow your mind.

• The really amazing Dutch program that made it so easy for them to buy a second house in Italy. This may not exist anywhere else in the world and again, it will blow your mind.

And the place she thinks of when she thinks of “home.”

Paid subscribers can access the entire conversation 👇🏼.

Watch the entire interview by clicking play on the video below. Or listen to the podcast.

Good news!

If you want to connect with Sarah, you can find her at Escape to the Bookshop where she talks about:

• Italy (and her progress on the bookshop she’s creating in her cellar),

• her life in Amsterdam,

• and what it's like to live abroad long term—how it impacts your identity and the way you see the world.

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